When it comes to content or social media marketing. It can sometimes be difficult to decide what to post on your social media platforms. You want to add value for your readers, but you also want to use it as a marketing channel and promote some of your own content or products.

In the following article I will explain how using the 5 distinct categories will not only help you decide on the topics you can create posts on, but also give you a more balanced platform with a variety of content.

For most business spreading your content equally between the 5 categories will be the best strategy to follow and keep your platform interesting, entertaining with the right balance of promotional content.

If one of the categories doesn’t feel right for your industry, you can use it less and add to one of the other, but always remember that your “Promotional” posts should never be more than 20% of the content.

This category is all posts that are informative in nature. You can share tips, tricks, how-to videos, resources, lists and any other content that teaches your ideal client something in your niche.

This is mainly posts that you created but can also be something someone else created that might be interesting for your audience. Keep in mind that this should ideally solve the problems your ideal client might have.

I normally tend to classify posts from other people under the entertainment category, but this is totally up to you and can you can share post that you did not create.

I mainly serve creative entrepreneurs like photographers and designers, so a good example for my industry would be to create and share recent blog posts on how to best market your new photography business.

Inspirational

Inspirational posts can be quote posts or quote images or posts about a story or video that will motivate your audience. You can share something about yourself or other people.

These thoughtful posts can increase interest and discussion. You can write an inspirational story about your opinions on an event, your employees’ or clients’ accomplishments or your company’s philosophy.

Here beautifully created quote cards that looks great and have an inspirational message will be perfect for my industry.

Entertaining

Entertainment posts are normally posts that have nothing to do with your business. It can be anything that your ideal client will find entertaining and useful. These can include jokes or timely and comical photos. Anything that is funny or clever can be entertaining to your audience.

Just keep in mind that humor can be quite tricky and does not work for all types of businesses. It is for this reason that I include educational content from other people that might be entertaining for my audience as well.

As an example again I will share either something funny in the photography niche – like an insider joke – or anything relevant that I didn’t create myself.

Engaging

Here you can have any type of post that increases engagement, gets everyone involved and creates conversation. You can ask questions (short answers), answer questions, have office hours, contests or challenges.

You can also give them a peek behind your business or life by posting photos of your new office, project planning or other tools, photo shoots, book covers and testimonials.

Other interesting options are “caption the image”, “fill in the blank” or “either or question” posts to help get people talking.

My example would be posting behind the scenes posts of how I did a Content Marketing Strategy with another photography company or a case study of a new beautiful website that we created.

Promotional

The final category includes all promotional posts. All advertisements for products, programs and services. Posts can promote your freebies or other free products; webinars, events, other social media platforms and websites.

Promoting joint venture partners or affiliates also falls under this category.

Promotional posts should be last on your list of priorities as people need to engage with you and know you before they will buy from you. You can take the information above and make it your own. Switch things around, event your own categories for your niche.

The main thing is to remember to keep a balance between the different type of post and never be too heavy handed with the promotions.

If you find the above article interesting, you might be interested in the Content Strategy Checklist, you will find it by clicking the button below.

Have you been struggling with your Content Marketing? In this article you will learn how to create a consistent content marketing strategy in 21 simple steps.

The problem is that it can be hard to create content consistently and even if you manage to consistently do content marketing. If you are not being strategic about what you post, it’s not going to convert visitors into leads or leads into sales.

Content marketing is arguably the most important aspect of Digital Marketing, so how can you go about creating strategic content consistently?

Follow the following framework. You can do it once every 90 days and try and create the content for the quarter ahead. Alternatively starting out with a month or so of content will be a good start if it’s your first time.

PLANNING YOUR CONTENT MARKETING

STEP 1 What Is Your Why?

Getting clear about why your business exists will help you define clear goals and design a focused online marketing strategy to achieve those goals Your WHY is the purpose, cause or belief that inspires you. Knowing your WHY gives you a filter to make choices in your business.

To help identifying your why ask the following questions:

Why does your business exist?

What greater purpose are you trying to achieve?

What changes are you trying to affect in your customers or the community?

What problems are you trying to help your customers solve and why are those problems important?

What do you want to share specifically and why?

When identifying your why, try to keep revenue out of the equation

STEP 2 What Is Your What?

What products and services are you offering to your customers or clients to achieve your “why”. Think about your current suite of products and services and try to identify those that have the most impact on your customers and the business.

Which products are most popular?

Which products are most profitable and generate the most referrals?

Which services do you enjoy delivering the most?

Prioritize these in order of value in terms of helping you achieve your “why”.

STEP 3 Who Are You Offering This To?

To identify who your ideal client is ask yourself this question:

who stands to benefit the most from your products and services?

Create a client avatar by describing exactly who this client is, what she does, how he looks, her values, hobbies, what is he reading or is she watching. What she buys and how she’s buying it. What Social Media platforms are his/her favourites and why.

STEP 4 Have Clear Goals for Your Business and Content

To ensure that your content marketing is strategic and not just posting randomly, you need to identify 3 to 5 SMART goals for your business. These goals should ideally help your business better deliver those products and services that are the most valuable to your “why”.

From these goals identify the main goals for your content marketing. Decide what you want to accomplish with your social media and blog content. Identify how these content marketing goals will help you obtain your business goals and ultimately your big WHY.

STEP 5 What’s Your Big Rocks for the Year Ahead (Or Next 90 Days)

What events are happening this year in your business and personal lives?

Think launches, vacations that are on the horizon, holidays or events in your industry or locally. Big projects or conferences that are already planned.

This doesn’t have to be finalized yet. It’s more to give you an overall idea of what your year is going to look like. Once you’ve figured this out schedule them into your calendar.

STEP 6 Topics/Categories

Identify the themes/ Topic Map /Categories that will work around your promotions. To start off we just want to get down as many ideas as possible.

Creating a mind map around these categories could be fun. We will identify specific topics underneath each of these categories later.

STEP 7 Audit

Often, we have mountains of content in our blogs, emails, and PDF’s that we’re just not using. Now that you’ve got a list of what you or your customer think are great ideas, let’s start checking off what we’ve got already.

Go through old emails, social media posts or other information where you’ve answered questions from clients or friends.

Have a look at old blog posts that might need a revamp, or that half written eBook that can be either completed or used for blog posts.

STEP 8 Editorial Calendar

Create an Editorial Calendar. You can use anything you like. Paper based or online. Find your favourite tool. You can download the ones I created for a workshop a while back or use Google Calendar. To be honest my go-to tool for clients is still an Excel spread sheet. If you want to get something more integrated have a look at CoSchedule or Nelio Content.

CONTENT CREATION

STEP 10 Topics for Themes or Categories

Now we are going to get into more specific topics for our themes and categories. For every theme identified in your planning session, start to investigate interesting topics. Use the 10x10 Matrix.

With the 10x10 you identify 10 Themes or Categories and then find 10 topics underneath each of them. You can easily get interesting topics by looking at books on Amazon on your theme. Try out looking at Podcast episodes or even forums for specific topics.

STEP 11 Brain Storm Ideas

This step can be a game changer for you. Spend about 5 minutes to jot down/brain storm your ideas on each topic. Set a timer and write down every little idea you have for this post. Everything you can think about without doing any research.

You can add resources and links to have a look at later, but for now just get everything out of your head. Spend 5 minutes on each topic and move along.

STEP 12 Types of Posts

Have a look at your brain stormed ideas and decide what type of post would work for each of the topics. There are several types of posts and some can be created easily by using templates.

STEP 13 Blog Posts.

One of the best things to use is the Content Framework. It makes creating any type of content more targeted and on point. (You will notice this post using the framework) You can use this on its own or combine it with the types of blog post talked about earlier.

There are also different techniques to write content faster which I go into more detail in my workshops but using the framework or one of my free templates will be a good start.

STEP 14 Social Media Posts.

Start to think how you can re-use this content. In what ways can you syndicate or splinter it into different posts? This is a very important step that some people don’t spend enough time on. You can re-use content in multiple different ways. Really consider this for each piece of content.

How can you share it on different channels? How can you syndicate or splinter it? One Blog Post can become a multitude of social media posts by using, the different sub topics, different images out of the post or going into more detail on data or infographics. Keep your content marketing strategy and goals top of mind.

Also remember that there are 5 different Social Media categories and that a good balance between these 5 helps with a more rounded Social Media platform. I will create a separate post going into more detail on these, but for now you are welcome to download the infographic below:

STEP 15 Graphics

Create your branded graphics in bulk. Using a tool like Canva or Photoshop you can easily use a template to create all your graphics in one go. This is a lot easier than creating images ad hoc or daily.

Start with collecting all the stock images or photos for all your posts in one place Then edit them with your consistent branding using a template. You can first do all the images for one platform and then resize them or do them for different platforms depending on the tools you use.

STEP 16 Detailed Editorial Calendar (Optional)

You can now update your Editorial Calendar with more details if you want. This depends on your style. If you like working off detailed plans and just copying and pasting into your scheduling tools then add as much as possible into your Editorial Calendar at this stage.

Alternatively, you can just update with Headlines and links to the information so that you can do the detail inside your scheduling tool.

Some scheduling tools also have bulk upload capabilities, in that case instead of updating your calendar, you can create this file with all the information.

CONTENT SCHEDULING AND AUTOMATION

STEP 17 Scheduling Tools

​​​​​​​Setup automated scheduling in IFTTT, Zapier or other tools. There are a few tools that you can use to automate sharing to Social Media platforms whenever your latest blog post goes live.

Automating this can be very helpful as it will get that first round of sharing out without you having to do anything. IFTTT is a free tool and Zapier can also make things easier by creating a more customised way of scheduling out posts.

STEP 18 Schedule Blog Posts

​​​​​​​You can use the editorial Calendar plugins above to schedule your blog posts in WordPress. CoSchedule or Nelio Content makes blog posting as well as social media syndication very easy.

Alternatively, you can schedule your posts directly in WordPress by editing the Publish immediately option under Publish Widget.

STEP 19 Schedule Social Media Posts

Splinter out your posts and schedule to different platforms. For example, quotes, graphics, data or any other bits of the posts that can be highlighted.

You can also add extra content to the different platforms. For example quote cards, case studies, behind the scenes photos or updates or any other relevant original content and photos.

Finally, you can also curate and share other peoples posts that might be valuable to your audience. Curating posts can be a huge value-add to your original content.

STEP 20 Monitor and Follow Up

With all your content automated you can now monitor and engage at scheduled times each day. Block out approximately 15 minutes twice a day to engage with your audience on different platforms and answer questions.

In person engagement is very important, especially with the latest algorithms. With all your other content scheduled out you can put in the effort to show up in person.

STEP 21 Measurements and Optimisation

The last step is often over looked or not properly done but it is a very important one. You need to measure and see what is working and what is not. You can get analytics by setting up Google Analytics as well as in the different Social Media platforms.

Keep an eye on what types of posts are getting the best engagement with your audience, what posts are generating the most traffic and the posts converting the most subscribers or clients. If you are using scheduling tools, keep an eye on the engagement of those posts. Most of the times it might be better to schedule directly in the native platform.

Optimise your posts and calendar according to your finding.

When following this framework and creating your content marketing strategy it’s best to not “go too big” when you first start out. It’s better to publish content consistently than starting out with a bang and tapering off. Create an Editorial calendar that feels doable to you.

To make it easy for you to follow the steps highlighted in this article, you can download the Content Strategy Checklist below:

During the workshop I promised a recording of the main things discussed during the workshop. It’s still on the to do list as soon as the excitement from WordCamp Joburg dies down.

Please check in again soon.

]]>https://simplydigitaldesign.co.za/creating-automated-marketing-funnels-wordpress-wordcamp-capetown-2017-workshop/feed/0The Fundamentals of a Sales Funnelhttps://simplydigitaldesign.co.za/the-fundamentals-of-a-sales-funnel/
https://simplydigitaldesign.co.za/the-fundamentals-of-a-sales-funnel/#commentsThu, 22 Jan 2015 16:00:00 +0000http://simplywebsites.co.za/the-fundamentals-of-a-sales-funnel/The post The Fundamentals of a Sales Funnel appeared first on Simply Digital Design.
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For an online business owner, a sales funnel is probably the most important marketing tool you have. And yet many entrepreneurs – both new and established – have no clear understanding of what a funnel is or how it works.

As you can imagine, failing to fully understand this critical part of your business means fewer sales, lower profits, and ultimately, an unstable business.

Sales funnel is the way you move the client from a lead to a paid client and then to an even higher paid or VIP client. At the very least your funnel should exist of the following pages

Sales Page or Lead Capture Page

The first page might be called an opt-in or squeeze page It serves one purpose—to get the reader to take action. Whether that’s to buy a product or offer up their email address in exchange for a free gift, this is the gateway into your funnel. It is therefore very important that this page consists of the following.

Ensure that both the pain points and benefits are clear

Remember to include a clear call to action. Tell the visitor exactly what you want them to do. “Buy Now” or “Get This”

Let this action be the only thing they can do on this page, eliminate all other distractions refrain from adding other links or menu bars.

Confirmation Page

The second page is in some cases not compulsory, but depending on your legislation and the Autoresponder provider you use, you might have to let the client confirm their email address.

It will normally be a simple page referring them to check their eMail.

For a sales funnel, this confirmation page might actually be your checkout page. It’s where they enter their payment details.

If you’re setting up a free funnel, this page has great power—and you don’t want to waste it!

Here is where you can offer an upset, remind people to follow you on social media, and give them a peak at your other products and services.

Remember, though, that they will only see this page once, so don’t put anything here that they will need to refer back to. That’s what the thank you page is for.

Thank You Page

The final page in the Lead capture funnel is the Thank you page. This is the page where they actually collect their download or the message that they will receive the course in the email or Post.

Like the confirmation page, this is valuable real estate, so you want to be sure you use it wisely. In addition to the downloadable item your customer just purchased (or opted in for) you also want to showcase your other offers—especially those at a slightly higher price point. Here’s why: the person looking at this page is a hot prospect. He or she is in a buying mood. You want to be sure to take advantage of that by putting your most relevant offers on this page. To encourage buying, consider including:

A limited time offer—scarcity sells, so if you can legitimately limit sales to a few hours/days or number of units, then this is the place to do so.

You can create a simple sales funnel to start off with and grow and automate it as your business expands and your product offerings increase. You can add upsells and downsells at anytime, but for now, this simple setup is really all you need.

]]>https://simplydigitaldesign.co.za/the-fundamentals-of-a-sales-funnel/feed/1Affiliate Marketing Without the Sleaze Chapter 2https://simplydigitaldesign.co.za/affiliate-marketing-without-sleaze-chapter-2/
https://simplydigitaldesign.co.za/affiliate-marketing-without-sleaze-chapter-2/#respondThu, 15 Jan 2015 13:00:00 +0000http://simplywebsites.co.za/?p=2613[xyz-ihs snippet=”Scheduling”]You will find the first “Chapter” of the Affiliate Marketing without the Sleaze over HERE We are continuing on from there in discussing ways or principles that will keep affiliate marketing the profitable and authentic strategy it could be. Choose your product carefully. If you are promoting a single product, remember that it is […]

]]>[xyz-ihs snippet=”Scheduling”]You will find the first “Chapter” of the Affiliate Marketing without the Sleaze over HERE

We are continuing on from there in discussing ways or principles that will keep affiliate marketing the profitable and authentic strategy it could be.

Choose your product carefully.

If you are promoting a single product, remember that it is better to specialize in one product that either brings a huge return by way of commission or brings in masses of sales.

If you are promoting across a platform such as Amazon, where there are masses of organic visitors pre-qualifying themselves every day, it won’t matter so much if the commission or other rewards is comparatively low just because of the numbers—but if you are promoting a high-ticket course, for example, you will have a small, specialized conversion rate, so it’s important to make sure the commission on each sale will be well worth-while.

Be your own case study.

If you can prove what a measurable, positive difference a system, course, product or eBook has made in your own life, you will double your chances of getting a conversion.
If you are just starting out, you have a perfect opportunity to plan the documentation of your journey, step by step.
Use videos and tracking data screenshots, in addition to photographs. Note that people respond especially well to videos, since they perceive these as less easy to fake—particularly if you are showing something happening in real-time—mistakes and all!
Remember that people identify with mistakes and failures, so providing you also show the way to overcome or avoid these, you can create tremendous credibility by keeping it real.

Be clear about which specific niche you operate within.

Resist the urge to promote products all over the map. Only promote products that are highly relevant to your list. This is the only way to keep building trust with your followers.

Make it easy for others to praise you.

Unfortunately it is all too easy to fake results in images and screenshots—and your audience knows this all too well. That’s where your reputation comes in. Combine your proof with praise from others: Both formally (in testimonials or comments) and informally (i.e. people talking positively about you on social media, after using a product you recommended—or getting direct, no-strings-attached help.
Don’t just hope they’ll praise you, however:

Ask leading questions and ask your readers to answer these in your comments

Give specific, irresistible calls to action

Provide a feedback form (and be sure to tell people to leave feedback!)

Approach people whose products you want to represent and suggest a JV partnership.

If you already have a decent list and even a modest (but active and blossoming) web presence, it may be time to approach the person or company whose product you want to represent.
Before you do, however, think of this from your potential JV partner’s viewpoint: What is in it for her? Why will partnering up with you be an advantage when she already has many affiliates—none of whom need “special treatment”?
Give your potential JV partner the special treatment: Create a highly valuable incentive for her list. Make it easy for her to work with you. Provide resources, links and tracking. Show her how teaming up with you can potentially increase her conversions. (That goes back to creating a “win-win” situation.)

Be prepared to turn down offers.

As your affiliate marketing efforts become known and appreciated by your audience, the inevitable will happen. Companies will notice that people do what you say and buy what you recommend.
You may be asked to recommend products in exchange for pay. There is nothing wrong with this—as long as you follow two key “rules”:

Let your readers know you are receiving compensation to review the product—not necessarily within each article, but in your general disclaimer page or notice, as “Heidi” does in her Food Doodles blog.

Be ruthlessly honest. Never, ever let a generous fee (or free product) make you feel pressured into giving a kinder review than you would if you’d had to purchase it for yourself.

It is your reputation on the line. You will only maintain your celebrity affiliate status if people absolutely know they can depend on you to tell the truth about products, whether you are asked to review them or not.
Make sure the person or company asking you understands that your review will be unbiased and honest.
(Incidentally, this is also when you will know you’re reaching “celebrity affiliate” status.)

]]>https://simplydigitaldesign.co.za/affiliate-marketing-without-sleaze-chapter-2/feed/0Why You Should Join a Giveaway Eventhttps://simplydigitaldesign.co.za/join-giveaway-event/
https://simplydigitaldesign.co.za/join-giveaway-event/#commentsMon, 15 Dec 2014 07:45:36 +0000http://simplywebsites.co.za/?p=2599JV Giveaway Events One of the best ways to build your list quickly is to have access to someone else’s list. Off course to make it worthwhile this list must consist of people more or less interested in what you have to offer. That’s why a JV Giveaway event is such a wonderful opportunity to […]

]]>JV Giveaway Events
One of the best ways to build your list quickly is to have access to someone else’s list. Off course to make it worthwhile this list must consist of people more or less interested in what you have to offer. That’s why a JV Giveaway event is such a wonderful opportunity to build your list. Service providers serving the same niche or industry come together and offer their gifts on one platform.
A Giveaway event is like a giant shop window for all participant’s Freebies, gifts or opt-in offers. The host will create one page that displays all the different gifts with images and details and the visitor is free to select what they are interested in.

How exactly does it work?
Each one of the participants agree to send a minimum amount of traffic to the giveaway page. They will receive an affiliate link that they will go and promote to their individual list. They also use Social Media to get people engaged in visiting the page. Therefor Visitors from all of the participant’s lists will land on the giveaway page. You can therefore see the huge possibility for each of the contributors to get noticed by visitors. They will click on the download button and get taken to the individual squeeze pages.

Hosting a giveaway event
Being the host to an event like this could mean a huge increase in the amount of subscribers on your list. You could have an opt-in box or gateway to the Main giveaway page and therefor collect details from all visitors to the site. Alternatively the host’s gift would normally be shown at the top increasing the probability of someone opting in. Off course running the event would be a lot of hard work as you need to create the site and keep track of participant’s unique visitors. This is however simplified by using a plugin for your Word Press Website that has most of the functionality already build in.

Participating in a giveaway event
As said before you get the opportunity of having a lot of eyes on your offer. So you need to make sure that it is something enticing. You also need to commit to sending the traffic to the page. No one likes a free loader and in most event participants who does not send a minimum in the first few hours would be eliminated. If you do not have a huge list already, traffic can easily be generated by using social media. Even running Facebook ads could make a significant difference. Everyone loves free offers so you should not have a problem getting the clicks as long as you have enticing posts and images.

What else do you need?
Besides your free offer ready to be downloaded, you need to make sure that you have a squeeze page or landing page that makes the visitor feel that they came to the right place. Normally just using a graphic or headline similar to that of the Giveaway page should do the trick. You will upload the link to your opt-in page together with an image of the gift, a title and description. Some giveaways also require a headshot of the contributor but this is in most cases optional.

What makes for a high quality event?
The most important thing is that all contributors need to work together to promote the event. Even people with small lists can send a decent amount of traffic to the site as long as they market in some way. Having prizes for leaders could help with motivation and also your offers will rank in order on the page so the more traffic you will send the higher your change of getting notice. Saying that, giveaway events works far better with fewer participants. It does not help to overwhelm the visitor. It is also best to keep the event running only a limited amount of time. This adds the scarcity factor to the event and also helps with focused marketing of the campaign.

I think participating in giveaway events is one of the best and probably easiest things you can do to increase your subscribers. Hosting an event like this is even more beneficial as long as you are willing to do the work. You will find people in Facebook Groups hosting events so make sure you join one in you niche. If you are interested in participating in an event like this with small business owner and start-ups as the target audience, contact me! Also if you are interested in hosting your own event don’t hesitate to contact me. BTW the plugin I use is the JV Giveaway Plugin.

Affiliated Marketing can be a tricky business. On the one hand it is a great way to earn passive income, but unfortunately due to low value product being offered in some cases and some people using pushy sales techniques it has gotten a bad rap. Use these ideas to make affiliated marketing feel natural again.

Only if you are comfortable with your affiliate marketing model and practices will this happen; otherwise, if you, yourself, feel that your affiliate marketing is forced, two things will happen:

• Your readers will find it “forced” too
• You’ll start to avoid putting in the time

Finding a model that is comfortable for you will keep you addicted to helping your followers and subscribers.

1. Use giveaways and valuable information to establish a relationship.

Before people take your recommendations seriously, they need to feel you are honest—that you’re the “real deal”. If you focus on helping visitors and readers first and recommending products as a natural result of this, you will soon start to build the credibility you need before your recommendations can be taken seriously.

Keeping this in mind, make sure that all gifts you offer are your best ones: No rehashed old resell rights material or stale PLR disguised as token reports.

The relationship (and the trust) has to come before any big sales pushes

2. Be straightforward.

Just because you are taking a relationship-based approach to affiliate marketing, don’t feel you have to pussy-foot around the issue of what you’re recommending. Once you’ve identified your visitor’s problem and given her hope there is a solution—provide it, up front and without apologies or explanations.

This is absolutely crucial, no matter what style of affiliate marketing you choose to embrace.

3. Boost your reviews and bonuses.

If you are running a review site—or even just including the occasional review on your blog or website—consider using a “double whammy” strategy to increase your targeted reach. In other words, don’t just promote the product: Promote your review!

This doesn’t just mean sharing your blog post link on Twitter or announcing it on your Facebook Page. Get creative—try strategies such as video reviews, actively showing people what you are talking about in real-time as you demonstrate the pros and cons of a product.

Or give a micro-video-review that actually just hits what the product’s main purpose and benefit is, inviting readers to click on your link to learn more.

And if you are adding a great bonus gift to an affiliate product, promote your bonus gift too!

4. Review more than one product in the same post.

Even if you are not running a “comparison” review site in chart form, consider reviewing more than one product, brand or version.

People love comparisons… but be as objective as possible and include affiliate links for both products, as Laptop magazine does in the example below.

Comparisons give you a chance to earn more money. And remember that what may be a detriment in your eyes could be the very feature someone else is looking for.

5. Don’t just tell people about a product—show them how to use it.

Making a video that shows visitors how to solve their problem by using a recommended product should be a “must” for all affiliate marketers. Not only does it appeal to those who learn visually or in a tactile, kinesthetic manner, it also provides real “proof” that (a) you’ve tried and used the product yourself and (b) it works!

(You’ll also overcome fear barriers by making it look easy.)

A warning, however: Don’t just buy the product, and hurriedly “wing” your “how to use” video. Sure, you may actually do a creditable job (since it’s to be hoped the product doesn’t take rocket science to use) but that is not affiliate marketing with integrity.

Take the time to get to know your product, inside out. Use it in your everyday life. That way, you’ll discover hidden tips and tricks—and these “insider” tactics are what will really convince your viewers that you are worth listening to (and your recommended product is worth buying!)

These are only a few ideas to help bring the glam back into affiliate marketing. Be sure to lookout for chapter 2 for more ideas.

]]>https://simplydigitaldesign.co.za/affiliate-marketing-without-sleaze-chapter-1/feed/0How Article Marketing Workshttps://simplydigitaldesign.co.za/article-marketing-works/
https://simplydigitaldesign.co.za/article-marketing-works/#commentsThu, 27 Nov 2014 11:10:30 +0000http://simplywebsites.co.za/?p=2584Article marketing involves the writing of short internet based articles for the purpose of submitting them to online article directories which will publish the articles as content for their own websites and offer the articles as content for other websites. One of the keys to article marketing is creating an author bio which includes at […]

]]>Article marketing involves the writing of short internet based articles for the purpose of submitting them to online article directories which will publish the articles as content for their own websites and offer the articles as content for other websites. One of the keys to article marketing is creating an author bio which includes at least one link to your website, and is generally placed at the end of your article. This link is one of the most critical components of the article marketing strategy, as that link will drive the bulk of the traffic that is central to just about any article marketing purpose.

When you submit your articles to an online article directory, they will first approve or disapprove the article based on its quality and relevance to the theme of their website. In most cases, if the articles are written with decent language and grammar, are written about a topic that is included in their directory (and there are many that are general-purpose), and contain reputable content of just about any kind that is legal, the article directories will generally publish the articles. When they do not, many of the article directories will send you an email indicating why they have rejected your article, and by studying the rejections, you can determine what changes you need to make to get your articles to the point that they are generally accepted and published.

Once your article is approved and published, it will be available online the world over for search engines to see and index, for humans to access and read, and for other webmasters to use as content for their own websites.

Many of the article directories also use RSS feeds that allow other webmasters to automatically update their own websites with the content from the article directories (including your own articles).

The net result of this article writing and submission process is that, depending on which and to how many article directories you submit your articles, not only does your article move through the internet at an astounding pace, but the link which you have included in the bio section of your article also propagates throughout the internet.

]]>https://simplydigitaldesign.co.za/article-marketing-works/feed/1Membership Sites – Your Back End Systems.https://simplydigitaldesign.co.za/membership-sites-back-end-systems/
https://simplydigitaldesign.co.za/membership-sites-back-end-systems/#respondWed, 26 Nov 2014 13:16:35 +0000http://simplywebsites.co.za/?p=2580While the lure of $5 or $10 or $20 per month from 1,000 or more subscribers might be what motivates you to create a membership in the first place, that should not be your end goal. After all, you’ll need to work to keep those subscribers happy. You’ll have to create new content every month, […]

]]>While the lure of $5 or $10 or $20 per month from 1,000 or more subscribers might be what motivates you to create a membership in the first place, that should not be your end goal. After all, you’ll need to work to keep those subscribers happy. You’ll have to create new content every month, and even if you outsource that (and you should) you still have to manage it.

So what’s a business owner who’s chasing the passive income dream to do? Build a better back end!

Automate Your Email Contact

Probably the most important piece of a profitable back end is email. It allows you to stay in contact with potential buyers, recommend products and services, and even get feedback from your audience.

And here’s the most powerful tool in your email arsenal: the autoresponder.

By setting up a series of emails ahead of time, you can easily be making offers while you sleep, take a vacation, or work on your next big launch. Autoresponders – once they’re set up – are almost completely hands off. All you have to do is revisit them once a year or so to make sure they’re still applicable to your audience.

Monetize Your Download Pages

Here’s another important piece to the passive income puzzle: download pages. Ordinary marketers and small business owners, once they receive an order, send their new customer a link to download the files. But if you’re sending the files directly, you’re very likely missing an opportunity to make more sales.

Think about it. The customer who has just bought from you is primed and ready to buy again. It’s up to you to make the offer, and the download page is the perfect spot. You can include sections such as “Customers who bought [this] also bought…”, affiliate offers for complementary products, and of course, upsells to higher-priced offers.

Look Out For Your Members

New (and sometimes even established) business owners are often reluctant to make offers of related products and services. They might feel that emails and other offers are a bother to readers, or that “other marketers in my niche already promoted that,” or that “everyone has seen this product already.”

You could not be further from the truth!

Consider this. Your readers consider you a trusted resource. They depend on you to filter the available flood of information, and to present just what’s relevant and valuable. It’s your job (responsibility, even) to share what you find with your readers. They’re expecting it.

So as a business owner, look out for your readers. Let them know what you find, or someone else will become their “go-to” resource.

Setting up a recurring membership is just the beginning of your passive income funnel. When you build up and properly monetize the back end, you’ll enjoy a steady stream of income that grows over time.